Chapter 111: Quarter-finals
The sun shone dimly as it began to make its rise to begin the day as the auburn colour ruled the sky for the moment. Some of the crowds began to make their way to the stands, an early start that even some of the townspeople cannot get used to. The sound of birds chirped for the beginning of the day as the small crowd took their seats, some of the quarter-finalists were up training while some of the others were resting another hour or ago until morning actually came. Unfortunately, Hikari and Max were not one of those lucky fighters that got to sleep in for an extra hour as they stood by the side-line with their good friend, Riku, waiting Brian's match to start for the day. "Why are we up again?" Hikari kept her annoyed glare at their silver haired companion, before looking at his hair once more. "You need a haircut." She said bluntly to him.
Riku ignored her comment about his hair, feeling that it's too early to have an argument about his hair being to his shoulder. "Sora and I needed to get up to ask Hercules about the Olympus Stone and seal the Keyhole and we needed to wake Brian up for his match." He explained to them, smirking as he added. "It would be unfair if you guys got to sleep in."
"We only would have had an extra hour." Max yawned.
"I hardly call it a sleep in when we were up not only a few hours ago, pieces all the information we had gathered." Hikari crossed her arms as she looked away from the silver head. She never did like being woken up when the sun hadn't even risen properly.
After Chris had left them alone, the party went in the guest room that was set up for all of them and began to clean certain facts down. They knew an Endless was the reason Sora was blamed for destroying Chris's life, due to the fact that Chris got attacked and now shows signs of having the Endless Virus at a fast rate, they also knew that Hades is trying to get rid of said Endless that is in the world, as least from Brian's point of view. They did worry why Chris suddenly knew about Kairi though as some conversations mentioned about Sora telling Hercules about his friends and in return Hercules told Chris in respect of telling the Keyblade Master's grand journey to save the worlds while others mentioned that Chris could always sense a certain emotion, allowing him to know about Kairi. They only hoped that Hercules told him about Kairi, otherwise many other questions and cautious might need to take place.
"Where's Sora?" Max asked Riku tiredly, earning a jab in the side from Hikari when he yawned again.
"He's getting the Olympus Stone off Hercules and sealing the Keyhole." Riku told him, his arms crossed as he looked out onto the arena. "When he returns, we'll head out."
"So you'll stay for Brian's match but not ours?" Hikari said in disappointment, she was half hoping that the two could at least stay to see both of their matches.
"Don't worry." He quickly assured her. "We won't leave until after your match with Hercules."
Before any of the two responded, Phil's voice echoed through the coliseum, making the crowd go wild. "Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the first match of the quarter-finals! I want you all to give a hand to our first two quarter finalists. First, give it up to Junior Hero Snow Villers!" The three watched the arena doors open to reveal the familiar fighter as he ran onto the arena, cheering along with the crowd and the chants began to play. It wasn't hard to see who the crowd's favourite was. "Now! Give it up for the newcomer hero! Brian Devon!" On the other side of the arena was their good friend, Brian, who looked like he had just woken not only five minutes ago.
"I'M HERE! I'M HERE!" Sora quickly ran over to the three, pocketing the Olympus Stone into his pocket as he stood with them, attempting to catch his breath. "Am I on time?" He asked them.
"It's just about to start." Riku quickly informed his friend before the four of them looked back on the arena.
The crowd walked with anticipation as they watched the two competitors take their starting positions, Snow adjusted his gloves and slammed his fist together, forming an shine of sparkling ice for a short moment while Brian summoned his staff, placing it to his side as he waited for the starting command.
The starting horn sounded, Brian was the first to move out of his fighting stance as he rushed towards Snow, staff in his hands. The mage ran at a fast speed, seeing that his opponent wasn't making any attempt to move out of the way. I'm too fast for him. Brian smirked and swung his staff to his side at struck the fist-fighter head on, only to look at his successful attack in shock. "What the-?"
"I'm guessing you weren't inspecting that." Snow chuckled slightly as he held his arms in front of him, preventing Brian's weapon to strike him. His arms didn't even look damaged from the impact he had just struck. "My go." The blonde fighter quickly forced his crossed arms forwad, making the staff fall back and hit the mage in the face. He quickly struck the red headed teen in the mid-section before he had a chance to react, making the teen back away slightly.
Brian only glared as he quickly created a wall of fire between him and Snow to make him back away. "Close combat…bad idea." He grunted to himself as he tried to quickly recover from the strike to the mid-section. He knew one thing; the guy knew how to punch. He looked back at his opponent, only to jump quickly out of the way as the blonde fighter on the other side of the arena began to blast sphere amount of ice attacks, creating ice paths as they struck the floor. "And apparently ice attacks as well." He looked back at his opponent again only to looked at him in confusion, instead of the hero mad blonde, he stood opposite to a familiar black haired teen, casting ice attacks at him as his dark ocean blue shadowed claw glowed. "Nikolai?" His imagination allowed him to get struck by a water spell, sending the Endless to the ground.
"C'mon Brian!" Max shouted out to him from the side-lines.
"Get your head in the games!" Hikari yelled to him.
"You can do it!" Sora cheered as the four continued to shout encouragement to the red haired mage.
Brian quickly shook memories of the Sorrow Endless out of his mind; he didn't need to get distracted while he's trying to stay in the fight. He lifted his head up at looked at his opponent in amusement. "You're better than I thought." Brian breathed the compliment. "So someone that doesn't have a weapon."
Snow chuckled slightly at this. "It's better to fight the enemy head on."
"It sounds more impatient to me." He commented back.
"The heart can be impatient." Snow simply told him before running towards the teen.
Still being on his knees, Brian quickly rolled out of the way of Snow's rushing attack, knowing that his black gloves has turned into ice as he had attempted to attack him with. With his staff in hand and the angle that he was placed at, they was no way that Snow will be able to turn around in time to block his attack. Brian pounced towards the tall blonde teen, striking at the fighter's side at a fast rate with his staff before jumping back slightly as he pointed the Staff of Myth towards Snow. "Wind!" Brian quickly casted, creating a huge amount of wind.
The strong winds maked his opponent gasped slightly, crossing his arms in front of him and keeping his stance firm, preventing himself to get blown away. He simply remained in that position, looking up slightly to see the teen stop the winds, only to feel and huge amount of electricity struck his entire body. "Ah!" The fighter broke out of his defence stance as the thunder attack moved his muscles by the struck of nerves.
"Gotcha." Brian smirked as he rushed towards his opponent, knowing for a fact that he won't be able to block in time due to the thunder attack.
Backfire was the first thing that reached his mind as he watched Snow jump away from Brian's attack, jumping up in the air. "Here it comes." Snow shouted from the above the mage as he slammed down to the ground, creating a huge pillar blast of light and ice, sending the mage crashing to the ground, leaving impacting marks within the sand.
"Brian! You can't quit now!" Riku watched as his red headed friend struggled to pull himself up, the other encouraging calls behind him.
The voices of his friends echoed through him, grunting painfully as he slowly began to push himself off the sandy ground, trying to catch his breath as he felt the crowd's stare on him as if they were waiting for him to pass on right there on the spot so that they could fly down and pick at him. He turned to the crowd, mainly glaring at them for their curious glaring, only to watch the crowds cheers disappear and his vision began to blur them out.
Hikari looked at her friend with a worried expression, watching the red head look around the arena in confusion before looking back at Snow with shock and curiosity. "You think he's having another flashback?" she said with concern.
"If he is, he needs to snap out of it." Riku quickly said, seeing Snow charging up an ice attack for the final blow. "Brian!" he shouted to him, only by the other boys to try and snap Brian out of his daydream.
His friend's voice was muted to him; he pushed himself up from the ground, keeping his eyes on the scene that was in front of him. Instead of seeing his tall opponent, he saw a younger version of himself, looking around the coliseum with awe and wonder while Phil seemed to be talking to his master, his father. The figure of the man was clearer this time and he could tell that it was the man in the back of the photo with him, Nikolai and Addie. His spiky white hair stood out in the yellowish coliseum as he adjusted the brown cloak hanging over his shoulders, hiding most of his attire from view but what Brian could tell was his dull dark coloured shadowed claw was protected by sliver plated armour and his back cargo trousers were wore and ripped, possible from old battles. What had caught his attention though was that his former master had a rusty keyblade in his hand, the same keyblade that Daniel had in his procession. His mind had gone into overdrive, none of these memories make any sense, and the only way that any of this would make sense would be if he was from-
And just like that, his mind snapped out of his daydream, the voices of the crowd returned, the warning shouts from his companions shot at him like wild fire. He looked at them quickly, his mind concluding his theory by the sight of Sora before looking back at where he saw the memory, only to jump back to avoid Snow's attack.
"Welcome back." Snow joked, smashing his fists together. "Ready to give up?"
Brian looked back at his white haired friend, his heart and mind felt as if had been ripped apart by the reforming of some of his chains within his memories. Snow's question forgotten as he looked back at his opponent, looking back at his staff as he watched his staff dissolve into him, a fire burning inside of him. He smirked at the questioning fighter opposite him as he placed his hands opposite it each other as if he was holding a sphere shaped object in between. "Not until you fall first." He answered, creating a huge fireball in his hands as he fired to ball forward. "Take this!"
Snow's eyes widened at the sudden attack, being too close to be able to block as he felt the fireball strike him right in the chest, sending him digging into the sand, completely flat on the floor. He groaned as he looked up at the sun rising sky with exhausted eyes, only to be overshadowed by the red head himself, a staff pointed to his burned armour chest. "You're better than I thought, Brian." Snow sighed as he placed his head back on the ground. "You win."
The crowd widely as Phil quickly announced Brian as the winner, his friends chanting his name at the side lines, with Brian in the semi-finals; it was one step closer from getting that sword. They watched as Brian helped his opponent up, smiling as they watched the two shake hands in a form of sportsmanship.
BOWBOWBOW
The crowd began to slowly pick up as the morning fully came, the sun shone brightly over the coliseum as the birds flew chirped over the East bracket of the coliseum. Sora and Riku watched as Vincent Valentine made his way into the arena as the next match was on its way, talking into the communicator to their friends on the gummi ships, their signal jumpy for some reason. "So how's Kairi?" Riku asked the person on the communicator.
"Kairi had just woken up." Goofy's voice came from the communicator. "Donald is just checking her wounds before curing them."
Sora sighed in relief at this, "I'm glad she's okay." Despite seeing some light, he still felt awful about what he done to Kairi. "Can you tell her I'm sorry?" he asked him.
"YOU ALREADY SAID SORRY SEVENTEEN TIMES!" Donald's voice could be heard over the communicator, the loudness of his voice had managed to catch some of the crowd's attention but they simply ignored it.
"But I'm really sorry." Sora pouted, earning a giggle in the background. "Kairi? Is that you?"
"Hey Sora." A tired voice spoke as Kairi came to view on the communicator. "Hey Riku."
"Hey Kairi." Riku waved while giving at grateful smile.
"Hey Riku, can I have the communicator?" Sora asked him.
"Sure." Riku handed the red communicator over to his friend only to watch it disappear in a blur of red. The silver hair teen growled as he turned to his right to see Brian holding the communicator. "Brian!" He glared at him in anger.
"Hey Kairi, miss me?" He said flirtatiously to her.
"Sora please." She simply said, making the boys behind him begin to laugh from the flat rejection.
"Sora's not here at the moment. Can I take a messa—" Riku wiped the communicator out of Brian's glove and handed it over to Sora. "Hey! I was talking!" Brian wined as he watched Sora walk around from the two to talk to Kairi more privately.
"Can't you just leave her?" Riku glare angrily at him, making Brian gulped slightly; he never did like Riku's tempers. "What happened to getting them together?"
"I still think that the two need their space." Brian shrugged before looking at the silver head seriously. "Kairi's just gonna get hurt. I'm just trying to protect her from Sora until we can cure him, okay?" He felt his temper rise within him.
"Just let them have their moments." The two looked back at Sora, seeing him laugh and smile happily as he talked to Kairi. "When the time comes, we'll be there to protect Kairi."
"If you say so.." Brian sighed, looking at Sora with envy for a moment before looking around for other fellow members of their group. "Where are Hikari and Max?" he asked as he looked back at Riku.
"They're getting ready for their match with Hercules over at West Bracket." Riku told him.
"Then why are we over here then?" Brian questioned before looking over at the arena to watch Chris come into the arena, watching as he glare at Sora in pure hatred, something that the white haired teen missed to see as he continued to look at the communicator. "Do we have to watch this match?"
"Don't you wanna know who you're going to face in the semi-finals?" Riku raised an eyebrow at this.
"I'll rather be the one talking to Kairi so you can have the pleasure of watching this match with your best buddy." Brian soaked. He didn't want to watch some accusing kid's match while he had other things to think about, like the memories that had flashed back at him in his match and the information that he managed to get out of Scott moments ago on the communicator.
"Tough luck." Riku simply said, turning his attention towards Sora as he joined the two, handing the communicator over to him. "What did Kairi say?"
"She said that we better win otherwise she's going to kick our hides in." Sora simply put.
"Awesome…" Brian grumbled in sarcasm as listened to the starting horn, signalling the fighters to begin. The beginning of Chris's match only conceded of Chris angrily charging towards the guy in the red cloak only to watch him simply dodge the slash, it was assuming that the older male was mocking the black haired teen. Brian raised an eyebrow, remembering that he had brown hair last night before shaking the thought away and looking back at the others. "When are you guys leaving to the Underworld?" he asked.
"After Hikari's match." Sora answered before smirking at Riku. "Someone wanted to watch her fight." He added, making Brian burst of with laughter.
Before Riku could counteract Sora's comment with a comment about him and Kairi, the crowd awed in shock as Chris tripped on the ground harshly. "Ouch! That's gonna hurt." Sora cringed slightly.
"Properly karma striking back at him for accusing you guys." Brian said with his arms crossed, watching Vincent looking at the fallen boy as if he was a joke. He was glad to know that he denied Hade's offer, at least they don't have to deal with any more trouble.
Within the crowds that were watching the match of their newest hero to be with anticipation, a hooded figure simply huffed from the back of the crowd, revealing their shadow like claw in front, glowing darkly round the infected claw. Almost immediately, the crowd gasped as they walked the teen gasped in pain before looking around with pure rage in his eyes. The figure smirked at his work; so much to create in such a small time, looking down at the side-lines to make sure that the Keybladers and the Aversion Endless didn't notice him before taking his leave.
The three boys watched with surprised as Chris slightly just bounced up from the floor and he placed his rigged sword in his holder before began to shoot dark orbs at Vincent, only for the dark man to use his cloak to block the attack before decided to pull his three barrel gun out to shot at the boy. "Something's not right." Riku did not like the fact that Chris was starting to use dark like attacks.
"This isn't good." Brian watched with concerned eyes as Chris casted Dark Firaga at his opponent. "His virus just burst through! We need to stop the match before the damn thing kills him." Within the second, Brian had left the keybearers' side, rushing his way to where Phil was.
"What can we do? We can't do anything until the match had stopped." Sora looked at the scene anxiously; he wanted to make sure that Chris didn't hurt himself or anyone else, despite the boy's hatred towards him. They watched as Chris reflected Vincent's shots with his sword as he ran up to him, his eyes turning golden yellow. "CHRIS! STOP THIS!" Sora shouted towards him. The only response he received was a rigged sword through at his face, only to meet the wall as the Keyblade Master quickly ducked out the way.
"Attention fighters!" Phil's voice echoed throughout the arena. "The match will be halted for a short break. Put down your weapons."
Although the command to halt the match was given, Sora and Riku watched with horror as Chris pointed his right arm, now covered in shadowing marks, towards where he had thrown it at Sora. The rigged sword easily thrown out of the sword and made its way back into Chris's grip, only for it to be thrown straight at his opponent. He quickly swung his forming claw in front of him, seeing that Vincent was reaching for his red cloak to block the attack with his golden gauntlet. They watched as Vincent's left arm was pulled to the side, allowing the sword to strike him in the chest.
"Chris! I said stop!" Phil appeared on the arena with Brian by his side, watching the tall man fall to his knees in pain, it was a surprise that he wasn't dead since the sword went through his chest. "This is no way a hero should act! I thought you wanted to go the distance?" Phil raged at his student, only to watch his student pushed pass both him and Brian. "Chris-"
Chris shot back around to face his trainer. "I'm done with this!" He announced. "If being a hero means welcoming murderous keybladers then I rather be in the Underworld with the rest of my family." He began to run out of the coliseum.
"Sora!" Brian shouted over to his friend while trailing behind Chris, he know that Chris will lost them in the hallways and Sora had been in the coliseum plenty of times to know the way out of the place. It didn't take long for Sora to join his side; it also didn't take long for them to lost Chris in the huge number of hallways. "God damn it!" He cursed.
"We can still stop him before he gets out." Sora told him, leading the way. "This way!" By time they reached the entrance of the coliseum, he was already out of their sight.
Hiding behind the coliseum doors to prevent those murderous travellers from getting their hands on him, Chris began to breathe heavily as he looked at his hands in shock, his right arm was now a pure shadowed claw; something that looked like it came off a Heartless. He began to panic as he fell to the ground. "W-what's happening to me?" He had just given up the only thing he had left, all because his hatred and rage had consumed him, controlling him to strike down the innocent fighter.
"You are becoming who you are meant to be.."
Chris looked back up, only to see a familiar figure standing in front of him, watching the figure smirk as his golden eyes shine down at the boy's. It didn't take long for the boy to grab a weapon from afar into his shadow's grasp. "You….you ruined my life!" He charged towards the criminal in front of him.
"Not so fast." His claw extended, pulsing widely as his ability took form, watching as Chris fell to his knees in pain as he grabbed his burning claw. "I see that you are still trapped within this boy. Don't you worry..." He placed his pulsing claw on Chris's chest, the boy's eyes widened. "I will free you from the torment."
Chris had never yelled any louder, something that was blocked by the crowd's cheers.
A/N: Woah! It's done. I hate writing fighting bits ¬¬ Now I'm back home for the summer. I should be able to update more and stuff….hopefully…it would be nice.
Kingdommad